Te Akau Monday Update

David writes:

Congratulations to Mark Walker and all the team in Te Akau Racing in Singapore in winning yet another Premiership!

Mark finished the season on 87 wins. A truly remarkable performance and 22 wins ahead of the second placed trainer.  Congratulations also to Gus and Karen Clutterbuck who are an incredibly important part of the Te Akau team.  It was such a lucky day for me when Mark Walker recommended that we gave Gus and Karen a job.  To begin with they ran our South Island stable at Rangiora and relocated to Singapore to work with Mark about seven years ago.  Gus is one of the best horsemen I have ever met and Karen is also just amazing.  Not only has she had a lot of success in looking after the difficult horses in the stable but she also runs the stable office with precision.

So to all the team in Singapore, well done on an effort you can be truly proud of.

After winning the stakes' race at Otaki on Friday 1 December with Chambord, placings was the best we could do in New Zealand this weekend.  I did think that Splurge went a super race in his stakes' race and it will not be very long before he is back in the winners' circle.

We certainly have a really nice team of horses to race over Christmas and into January and February next year.  Also all the Riccarton horses that all went so well in the South and over the NZ Cup Carnival, now all back in the stable after having a good break spelling here at Te Akau Stud.

Going back to Chambord for a minute though - one of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how Chambord seems to be a sprinter miler.   When I bought him I thought on pedigree he could be a Derby colt being by Zabeel out of a Montjeu mare.   Now you would think that Montjeu, a great sire who left four English Derby winners, that this cross would give you a horse that stays but unbelievably Chambord looks like a horse that will be a sprinter/miler.  In fact 1200m or 1400m might well be his distance.

We have all the mares and foals starting to come home now from the studs. Te Akau has 30 mares and this year will have about 24 foals.  All the mares that we sent to Xtravagant are now in foal and he finished up serving a beautiful book of mares and will sire about 130 foals from his first crop.  He was very fertile and easy to handle and Newhaven Park is just thrilled with him.  It will be fascinating in nine months' time when his first foals start to be born, we can't wait to see them.

The weather at Te Akau has gone from being unbelievably wet to unbelievably dry and we now want rain to green the pasture up.  I am always a glass half full man, rather than half empty and we always get some rain in December and I am punting that we will again this year.  We are continuing to chew all our horse paddocks out with a big mob of ewes and a big mob of yearling steers so if we do get some rain the paddocks will come away and look just beautiful.

We are busy selling cattle at the moment and each day are selling a unit (a truck and trailer load) of bulls or steers.  That is 35 big cattle on to a truck and trailer.   Last Friday the last lot of bulls we sent averaged 370kgs and the unit of steers that we sent the day before were 345 kgs so you can see that they are weighing really well and we are going to have another really good year.

Next week our attention and focus turns to the yearling sales and we are spending two days a week inspecting the yearlings for the sale.  There are 800 yearling entries in the Book One sale this year and it is a huge job but something I enjoy doing and the rewards when you get a horse like Embellish or Age of Fire or Te Akau Shark make it all worth while.

We still have shares in three horses from the Ready to Run Karaka sale.  They are selling very quickly.

One horse that I really like is an Alamosa colt that is going straight to Singapore to do his racing.  He is out of a Snitzel mare and there is one share left in him. Another horse that all our track work riders say really impresses them is the Deluxe De Lago gelding that I paid $200,000 for.  This is a very smart horse and he will be ready to race in about five weeks.  Plus we have a stunning So you Think filly that I paid $175,000 for that is spelling at Te Akau Stud with the white Reliable Man filly.  It is quite interesting how nature often looks after its own, as being a white filly you don't want the her to be in the sun for too long so I put her in a paddock with a lot of shade and she spends most of the day under the shade and then goes out for a run around and eats the good grass at night.  She also has plenty of sunscreen and a special sun-hat!!

So if you want to be involved in a horse from the Ready to Run sale you had better be quick and I advise you to call Karyn on 07 825 4701 today.

Have a great week and go the tangerine!